


Strange Pride

by eris_of_imladris



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Mother of Azog, Orc Culture, Orcs, Please Don't Hate Me, Textual Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 16:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eris_of_imladris/pseuds/eris_of_imladris
Summary: Orcs, like dwarves, do not spring out of holes in the ground.Written for B2MEM 2019. Prompts: mother of Azog, peer pressure.





	Strange Pride

The battle rages outside, under the harsh sun. Her son is out there fighting while she sits inside and waits. It goes against her very nature to think about the battle and the one who fights it, the others say. She should know her job. It is a hidden world she must preserve, the legacy of her people to fight another day. She must create more like her son, strong and bold leaders, if her people are to defend their home.

Her son was born pale, and so she has the blessing and the curse of knowing who he is. When she was full with one child or another she would watch him simply because she could. He might have been the strangest in looks, pale like their enemies, but he was the tallest and strongest and smartest. He has her mind, but with his strength, someone is bound to listen. Argush still wishes it was her sometimes, but she is long resigned to the fact that her purpose is what she already does. She will earn no glory, taste no fresh flesh. 

She tells herself, at least she will never get burned by the sun.

When he takes control at the head of a band, she is proud, but it is strange. Maybe this is why the other mothers try to forget who among the seething mass is theirs. Maybe this means they don’t have to think of him in the battle, imagine that pale skin red.

She hears the call of the enemies’ horns, and the young ones stir, eager to fight. The boys will, one day. When these enemies die, their sons will come back to fight again. It is why the other women tell her, again and again, to forget that she birthed the pale one. He is one of many, they tell her. One of many who will die and rot as any other. His dead body will smell no sweeter, they say as she listens for the army’s clanging footsteps to get louder.

She watches for her boy even as the others jeer and taunt. He returns wounded, but the men cheer his name. In his hand lies a bloody head, pale like his and fringed with strange hair. In the other hand there is a shiny circle that will call more enemies to their door.

Part of her wishes the circle was with the enemies. Then, they would have no reason to return. They would have no cause to try to enter the halls where dozens of her children climb the broken stairs.

Her boy is scarred, but somehow stronger. The scars make his face more like his people’s, and some begin to forget that he is ugly. They start to see his height and his strength and his mind even more clearly.

He makes no acknowledgment of her on his return. Why would he? She has two screaming brats on her knees and their sound, the men say, is more odious than the feral cries of their enemies, shouting words in a tongue none of them can understand. Still she watches, nudging aside the ones at her knees and wonders what it would be like for him to bring his spoils to her.

He grows in strength as the years pass and everyone knows his name even as no one knows hers. She is sure more children of hers enemies return and her son is slain and left out in the sun to burn. She knows she should forget, but she still looks for him, watches as he grows handsomer still with the slashes and pits.

One day the battle is too big, the slash is too deep, the wound is too strong, too few of her people return, and her boy’s body lies in the hall. The others notice her and give her strange looks, try to convince her to look down at her newest brats instead of back at the past. They will be some of the last, surely. She feels her body giving up just like his. 

None of her brats, short and dark, afraid of the sun and their own shadows, can take his place. It is his son that she watches, even as the others urge her to behave otherwise. His son, pale and tall and not scarred, full of promise as he was. She will not live to see his glory, and no one will ever call her name in the halls, but Argush allows herself to feel a most strange pride.


End file.
